


Page 8

by nyghtertale



Series: Decrypted Blood-Splattered Journal [3]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Diary/Journal, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-27 00:08:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyghtertale/pseuds/nyghtertale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Balancing PTA Bake Sales and missions for one's vague yet menacing government agency is difficult enough, without coming to the attention of the City Council.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Page 8

The top secret hush-hush whisper making the rounds at our unmarked facility nestled in the downtown industrial park, the one with the ten-foot high barbed wire fence and armed guards patrolling at 15 minute intervals, is someone got demoted for the helicopter incident. Now everyone is jumping at shadows. Figuratively-speaking, that is. Literally-speaking, any unauthorized shadows spotted outside the Official Shadowy Clandestine Meetings and Life Departure Zone (aka Parking Garage 3) are pinned in place and dissected with light scalpels. But the end result is that I’ve been tasked to investigate an incredibly straightforward workplace massacre incident at the Night Vale Post Office to determine if agents of a foreign government committed it.

My time would be much better spent preparing for the upcoming PTA Bake Sale. It’s for a great cause - our outer solar system allies deserve neutron bombs to use in the Space War - and I want to participate. However, the remote mountainside school where I trained provided instruction in poisoning and dining etiquette, not baking, and the government agents took me from my high school before I completed Home Ec. I’m confident I’ll be able to master the skills, but I’d planned to spend the weekend stealing proprietary information from the local bakeries.

If only use of the Cloning Machine didn’t require a week’s worth of paperwork and approval by three review boards. Or if the library weren’t going to be unknowable tomorrow.

But you don’t get to be an agent of a vague yet menacing government agency without learning how to cut some corners, frame other people for your actions, and clean blood out of leather. All I need do is leave the temporal spectrometer running in the Post Office while I make the bakery rounds. The 5% chance of unattended spectrometers causing a temporal rift that would swallow the building and anyone within 100 feet is well within typical mission danger parameters for civilian bystanders.

Target Priority List (in case not enough time to collect all the data)

  1. Identify what baked good provides the highest profit margin

  2. Recipes

  3. How to use kitchen equipment

  4. Hours when bakery will be empty and available for someone to break in and use their equipment

  5. Actual caloric content of the Double Frosted Night Vale Cookie Crumble Pie




 

Update: I should’ve used better tradecraft in my investigation of the Night Vale Post Office. It seems the Sheriff’s secret police noticed the disturbance of the sealed scene and reported it to the City Council. I have re-education scheduled for two days next week and a community service course on Respecting City Property and the Importance of Obeying Signs, held outside the dog park, on Wed.

Also, they want me to have a chat with the Apache tracker on the Native American magics he used to bypass their security cordon. I hate that guy. Not only is he clearly a racist - and I hate racists; diversity is what made our country great. That’s why the Founding Fathers insisted on representatives from all thirteen original colonies, to represent the widest range of viewpoints held by wealthy, educated, land-owning Caucasian men of English descent. Not only is he a racist, his headdress is anachronistic. It uses Velcro! Velcro hadn't even been invented until after we'd exterminated most of the Apaches! (Note: double-check dates on Wikipedia; if wrong, edit wiki entry)

A stroke of luck, though. I’ve identified one of my fellow PTA’ers as a member of the Sheriff’s secret police. I intend to blackmail her into providing baking lessons and a white chocolate walnut cookie recipe.

Possibly of concern, my partner got the liaison assignment with the City Council. We’re partnering with them to determine whatever mysterious sights that definitely no one saw and strange thoughts that in no way occurred to anyone. These types of political assignments can be more dangerous than subduing intrepid truth-seekers, but also more career-enhancing.

She claims it’s only because her cover as a child was better suited to handing out a questionnaire at the gymnasium. I suspect she’s been networking with the other children during school.

Perhaps I’ll sign up for the bluegrass guitar lessons at Louie’s burned down music shop in town. Do some networking of my own.

It does leave me the evening to myself to experiment with baking. As They say, be careful what you wish for, an ancient evil spirit may be hovering invisibly behind you, ready to take your soul.


End file.
